Herald Story about the latest in the efforts to allow open gay veterans to march in Southie parade. I applaud their decision to decline to participate under these insulting and degrading terms.
Please share widely!
Mass Equality deserves praise…
Is there anything stopping the City from issuing the parade permit to a different, more inclusive organization?
Apparently that’s how it used to be many years ago, and that’s what Carol Rose proposes in this blog post for the Globe. She also recounts the current parade regime’s fight in recent years to exclude Veterans for Peace.
http://boston.com/community/blogs/on_liberty/2014/03/mayor_walsh_should_honor_st_pa.html
Makes sense. This anti-gay (and anti-peace) reactionary rump doesn’t speak for Irish America.
Legend has it Speaker McCormack had a ‘No Irish Need Apply’ sign in his office that he pointed to whenever his largely working class Irish Catholic constituents asked why he voted on Civil Rights bills or rights for migrant Mexican workers in California. They’d complain why he was taking care of ‘those people’ instead of his own, point to that sign and say ‘because we were ‘those people’ once before’.
A parade and celebration formed by the Irish Diaspora in America fleeing religious persecution and political oppression in Britain only to find the same mindset governing America, a parade meant to oppose religious bigotry and celebrate their love of democratic values, is now practicing the same religious bigotry and exclusion it was meant to thwart. The same parade that protested ‘no irish need apply’ now states ‘no gays may march’. I am proud of Mayor Walsh and the Boston Strong movement for making a stance against the reactionary parade and in favor of an inclusive alternative.
McCormack had it exactly right!
Credit to Walsh for his attempt. That’s leadership.